The United States Sentencing Commission today released a new report that examines trends in compassionate release during fiscal year 2020 in light of the enactment of the First Step Act of 2018, and the COVID-19 pandemic (report available here).
According to the report, in fiscal year 2020, courts decided 7,014 compassionate release motions, granting compassionate release to one-quarter (25.7%) of those offenders. The number of offenders granted relief increased more than twelvefold compared to 2019 — the year immediately following passage of the First Step Act. Courts cited health risks associated with COVID-19 as at least one reason for relief in 71.5% of grants.
The Report looked at compassionate release requests and approvals during the 2020 fiscal year, running from Oct. 1, 2019, to Sept. 30, 2020, and identified considerable variability in the application of compassionate release across the country among those offenders in the study group—ranging from a grant-rate high of 47.5% in the First Circuit, which includes Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island, to a low of 13.7% in the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.
In an interview with NPR that aired on Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he will be issuing a new policy, after an NPR report found that some prosecutors are forcing offenders who plead guilty to waive their rights to file for compassionate release down the road.
"That sounded wrong, and we, immediately after I read your piece, started investigating that," Garland told NPR.
"Very soon we will be issuing new policies to prevent those kind of across-the-board requirements that defendants waive their rights to seek compassionate release," he added.